Tim - TimothyOne

David Bentley Hart: “…things we know before we can speak them…”

I start from the conviction that many of the most important things we know are things we know before we can speak them; indeed, we know them though with very little in the way of concepts to make them intelligible to useven as children, and see them with the greatest immediacy when we look at…

David Bentley Hart: On whether a secular civilization is possible

All civilizations to this point have grown up around one or another sacred vision of the cosmos, which has provided a spiritual environment and a vital impulse for the arts, philosophy, law, public institutions, cultural revolutions, and so on. Whether there will ever be such a thing as a genuinely secular civilization – not a mere secular society, but a…

Scenes From My Father

Fathers, seek out your children every day and give them a gift. Here are some gifts from my father. My first memory of dad. I’m not yet 4 years old. Dad lost his mother and younger brother in a terrible accident, which he witnessed. Strong hands are under my arms from behind and they hold…

Hawk

The hawk on the wire faces away from the road, but looks back at me over his shoulder. That posture is, by now, an icon of the large raptors: the curved neck, the eye and beak somehow more forceful because twisted back toward us. “I will regard you, but not seriously enough to turn…

Waterskin

The water must have come up high in the drainage ditch – nearly flooding over the blacktop – then froze at the surface, then went back down, fast. As the stream dropped away, the icey surface layer stayed, suspended in mid-air by the weed-stalks. From my car, at slow country speed, I notice the glass…

Deer

I remember some scene from a Christmas card: deer and other creatures from the wild wander into the frame where the Nativity has for a moment caught their attention, taught them to talk, and lightened their hearts from all fears. They’re in Narnia and the King is finally walking the land. Four or five…